My big worries

26 July 2008

Bonekickers (BBC1); Burn Up (BBC2)

Have you ever noticed how the Islamist terror threat has been ridiculously overplayed by the government? I have. I’ll be standing with my kids on a crowded Tube, looking at the 20-year-old with the beard, the knitted cap and the classic Bin-Laden-style salwar kameez/combat jacket combo and thinking, ‘Well, he’s a lovely devout bloke from the Religion of Peace, so he’s definitely not going to blow us up.’ And I’ll read those depressing MI5 estimates that there are at least 2,000 home-grown Islamist terrorist plotters dotted around Britain and not be depressed at all. Why? Because I get my facts from the BBC.

When, for example, I’m watching an episode of Spooks and threatening to nurture the heinous suspicion that this week for once the bad guys might finally turn out to be of a Muslim persuasion, the script will soon put me right. I know that, soon enough, the real villains will prove to be rogue elements in Mossad cynically trying to gain publicity for the evil, all-powerful Israel lobby. Or maybe fundamentalist Christians, who are at least as extreme and dangerous as anything the Islamic world has to offer. (We learnt this on the BBC’s The Power of Nightmares, remember?) Jesus, they’re a menace those fundamentalist Christians.

They popped up again the other day in the first episode of Bonekickers (BBC1, Wednesday), this time in the form of a loony Knights Templar sect who kidnapped an innocent Muslim bloke and chopped his head off. Some might have thought this bizarre storyline a bit distasteful, broadcast as it was a day or two after the 7/7 anniversary. But I’m with the BBC on this one. If only we pesky Christian types would stop decapitating Muslims and demanding the restoration of the Caliphate and the conversion, whether by honey or by the sword, of the Dar Al-Harb...No wait, hang on, oh, never mind.

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